[Discussion] A journey shaped by player choice - thoughts?

I have been thinking about making a Pokemon-fangame using Essentials and an aspect of the game that I have been thinking about pretty frequently is to let the game be as complex as the player wants it to be.

The idea came to me after a youtuber who I watch complained in one of his videos that the story constantly got in the way when he played Pokemon Sun and Moon and that all he wanted was just to beat the gymleaders, evil team and the Elite Four. And while I enjoy the story in Pokemon a lot, I understood where he came from.

So the idea that I had was to try and not restrict the player too much while still having a (hopefully) decent structure. There are still 10 gyms but there is more choice regarding the order that you challenge them with some gymleader-dialogue dialogue and even allowing alternate paths through some dungeons. For example, clearing the Electric-gym prior to an assault on the evil team's HQ would allow the player to shortcircuit machinery and get access to areas they wouldn't be able to get to otherwise.

The story could then be more fleshed out through optional sidequests, a system that I have been thinking of using for certain legendaries to make them feel more special and allowing the player to build proper relationships with the sidecharacters. Like depending on how many times that you interect with them, they grow closer to you and reveal more about themselves.

Even the idea of letting the player choose if they even want the starters they are presented with or want to stick with the Eevee that they start with and changes to roaming pokemon to make them act a little bit more like safari-pokemon in that they don't instantly run away and gives the player a more fair chance to catch them has been ones that I have been mentally playing around with.

And on a slightly different note, I wonder if it is a bad idea to give the Player Character some small hints towards a possible personality and backstory without necessarily making them talk. I was really put off by the main character's talking in Pokemon Splice so I don't plan on giving the player-character any dialogue but rather small things that gives them more of a place in the world (such as contents in the bag upon starting that could potentially tell a story when put together or emotional reactions to events happening). Opinions on forums seems to be really split so I just want to check.

Games usually aren't as complex as players desire them to be because of time constraint.

Ideas are easy to have, designs are easy to think about, bringing them to actual playability will cost time regardless.

The thoughts of making your own fangame is to be able to try to implement the designs you have in mind. Nothing is stopping devs from doing it, besides not doing it.

So just try sort of thing, to make something playable.


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In my own thoughts, PKMN games are traditionally design in which players may portray themselves through the 'playable character'. Player's character often don't have dialogues so players may imagine what they themselves would say, instead the character have simple emoticons to represent what the character is emoting, then the player interpret the information through their own subjectivity.


Two examples of 'player choices' is as follow.

i.e.1
~ Character B steals bread because can't afford bread. Player witness the act.
~ When asked what players think about the theft, developers could give literal choices such as:
~ I don't think it's right... I mean... the store owner works hard too... and she's a nice lady...
~ We should inform someone... it's not right to steal even though they're hungry...

The players can still portray themselves through the character, however not on the 'same' level as before. That will be advantageous and disadvantageous.
If the 'playable character' is meant to be a flesh out character full of personality already and so on. This isn't a character that the player will 'fully' portray themselves as, but a character the player will portray themselves through.
The advantage is when the character is 'interestingly defined', then players are allowed to play/portray through said character.

i.e.2
Alternatively. The choices could be:
~ When asked what players think about the theft...
~ Greatly Disagree
~ Disagree
~ ... (unspoken)
~ Neither
~ Agree
~ Greatly Agree

Now the players can 'emote' themselves without dialogues, and they're allowed to 'portray as themselves' since they're imagining what they would say, what they would do if they 'disagree' for example. There's no 'literal' given, where in the previous example, the choices are 'very literal'.

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Can't have both advantageous aspects per se. As the scale of how much literal, how much the player will portray as themselves alongside with how much they will portray as the character. Can't have both value max. One offset the other.
It can be a 'great' story, if the main character does heroic feats and complete the quests. It can feel linear however.

Allowing for players to feel 'non-restrictive' is challenging regarding what aspects are 'restrictive'. A story in which a player can 'do whatever they would like' doesn't really exist since they will always be limited to what the developer had coded. Procedural generation is only as powerful as its functionality. Even if there's a lot of branches, if they're all similar, the choices are still 'hollow'.

Nemesis within 'Shadow of Mordor' is good example of a story that writes itself sort of thing. Developers will come up with their own things, like 'optional side quests'.

To summarize in ways, definitely try to make the vision of what you think a 'better' experience would be. However, I think the challenges you'll face is more than what you expect, be ready to build tenacity.

It's easy to look at an existing experience, and think "if XYZ were different, it'd be better". and although that's subjectively true for that particular already very defined existing 'tangible' experience. To implement those 'better' experience into even a clone of said existing experience is well-earned-effortful hardwork.